'I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some
spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established;
12. That is, that I may be comforted together with
you, by the mutual faith both of you and me.'--ROMANS i. 11, 12.
I am not wont to indulge in personal references in the pulpit, but I
cannot but yield to the impulse to make an exception now, and to let
our happy circumstances mould my remarks. I speak mainly to mine own
people, and I must trust that other friends who may hear or read my
words will forgive my doing so.
In taking such a text as this, I desire to shelter myself behind
Paul, and in expounding his feelings to express my own, and to draw
such lessons as may be helpful and profitable to us all. And so there
are three things in this text that I desire to note: the manly
expression of Christian affection; the lofty consciousness of the
purpose of their meeting; and the lowly sense that there was much to
be received as well as much to be given. A word or two about each of
these things is all on which I can venture.
I. First, then, notice the manly expression of Christian affection
which the Apostle allows himself here.
Very few Christian teachers could or should venture to talk so much
about themselves as Paul did. The strong infusion of the personal
element in all his letters is so transparently simple, so obviously
sincere, so free from any jarring note of affectation or unctuous
sentiment that it attracts rather than repels. If I might venture
upon a paradox, his personal references are instances of
self-oblivion in the midst of self-consciousness.
He had never been in Rome when he wrote these words; he had no
personal relations with the believers there; he had never looked them
in the face; there were no sympathy and confidence between them, as
the growth of years. But still his heart went out towards them, and
he was not ashamed to show it. 'I _long_ to see you,'--in the
original the word expresses a very intense amount of yearning blended
with something of regret that he had been so long kept from them.
Now it is not a good thing for people to make many professions of
affection, and I think a public teacher has something better to do
than to parade such feelings before his audiences. But there are
exceptions to all rules, and I suppose I may venture to let my heart
speak, and to say how gladly I come back to the old place, dear to me
by so many sacred memories and associations, and how gladly I reknit
the bonds of an affection which has been unbroken, and deepening on
both sides through thirty long years.
Dear friends! let us together thank God to-day if He has knit our
hearts together in mutual affection; and if you and I can look each
other, as I believe we can, in the eyes, with the assurance that I
see only the faces of friends, and that you see the face of one who
gladly resumes the old work and associations.
But now, dear brethren, let us draw one lesson. Unless there be this
manly, honest, though oftenest silent, Christian affection, the
sooner you and I part the better. Unless it be in my heart I can do
you no good. No man ever touched another with the sweet constraining
forces that lie in Christ's Gospel unless the heart of the speaker
went out to grapple the hearts of the hearers. And no audience ever
listen with any profit to a man when they come in the spirit of
carping criticism, or of cold admiration, or of stolid indifference.
There must be for this simple relationship which alone binds a
Nonconformist preacher to his congregation, as a _sine qua non_ of
all higher things and of all spiritual good, a real, though oftenest
it be a concealed, mutual affection and regard. We have to thank God
for much of it; let us try to get more. That is all I want to say
about the first point here.